One: All together now, with gusto. “Score. Some. Goals.” – Again, this won’t go down in the 3 Game Essentials Hall of Fame for originality, but all the planning and focus on key elements won’t matter if the Kraken don’t put the puck in the net. They’ve been blanked in two of the last three games and scored only twice in the other. As head coach Lane Lambert said this week, the Kraken played very well in a 3-2 loss to Dallas and nearly won their prior game on Long Island before going down 1-0 in a shootout. But they aren’t playing horseshoes or tossing hand grenades here, so close only gets you so far. When they score at least three goals in regulation time, the Kraken are 8-0-3. At two goals or fewer in regulation, they are only 2-7-3. When they score one goal or fewer in regulation, as they did in Saturday’s 4-0 loss to the Oilers, well, they are 1-4-2 and pretty darn fortunate to have managed to secure four points in those games.

But you get it. You need to score to win in the NHL. At 2.46 goals per game, second worst in the league, the Kraken aren’t scoring enough. Jared McCann and Kaapo Kakko have had some games to break back in following long injury absences and the offense needs to take it up a notch with their help. They also need the power play, 0-for-11 in the home losses to Edmonton and Dallas, to get clicking again as it’s slipped to 21st overall at a 16.7% efficiency. Power plays tend to reflect a team’s overall offensive ability, so when struggling to score at even strength it will often carry over to the man advantage.

Still, it’s a man advantage. At this point, the Kraken need all the help they can get offensively. The power play, despite going 0-for-6 against the Oilers, did get some good looks and just couldn’t capitalize. It needs to capitalize here to give this team a jumpstart, especially with Mason Marchment sitting this game out after not practicing all week.

Two: Stay out of the box, please. It hasn’t gone well – This was part of one of our essentials last week against the Oilers and it now gets amplified because Edmonton scored twice on the only two power play chances the Kraken gave them. Actually, the Kraken only gave them one power play and the officials helped with the other by calling Marchment for goaltender interference while missing the fact he was slammed into the netminder from behind.

Regardless, the Kraken can’t take penalties. They’ve yielded 15 power play goals in 17 overall games against the Oilers. The Kraken penalty kill unit has also fallen to second worst in the league at just a 69.2% kill rate. More importantly, though, the Oilers are outstanding on the power play at a second best 31.9% despite their 5-on-5 offense not firing on all cylinders. When you can take Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Evan Bouchard and Zach Hyman and put them on the same unit, that’s like facing an all-star team while playing a man short. The Kraken did a good job of avoiding actual penalties last game, but realistically they should try not coming within 50 feet of the box in this one.

Three: Know your foe – The Kraken know the Oilers all too well and have only beaten them once at Rogers Place in their entire history, that coming nearly three years ago during an NHL record 7-0-0 road trip. Otherwise, the Kraken are 1-5-1 in Edmonton. They couldn’t even beat the Oilers here in preseason until finally prevailing for the first time ever back on Sept. 24, though their goal scorers that night included Jagger Firkus, Logan Morrison and Ben Meyers, so it wasn’t exactly two regular season rosters slugging it out. So yeah, Rogers Place is a house of horrors for them.

Draisaitl won’t have Marchment to elbow in the head or otherwise distract him from his game this time, though he still generated honed-in results regardless by scoring a goal and adding an assist in last Saturday’s win. McDavid also had a goal and an assist against the Kraken, as did Hyman and Nugent-Hopkins. Bouchard? The Kraken held him to just an assist. But pretty much every player the Kraken had to try to avoid getting beaten by managed to pad their stats in that game. Few teams can stop all five guys at once, but it would help the Kraken somewhat if all five didn’t make it on to the scoresheet this time.

Stuart Skinner got the start in goal in a 1-0 loss to the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday night, so the Kraken have apparently made a monster out of him. Since arriving in Seattle last Saturday with a save percentage of .878, Skinner has now stopped 49 out of 50 pucks fired his way for a .980 save percentage in his last two games.

Will Skinner get a crack at the consecutive game Trifecta in this one? Well, considering backup Calvin Pickard has a save percentage of .847, that’s a pretty good bet.

Projected lines (not official):

McCann-Beniers-Eberle
Catton-Stephenson-Tolvanen
Nyman-Wright-Kakko
Kartye-Gaudreau-Winterton

Dunn-Larsson
Lindgren-Montour
Evans-Oleksiak

Daccord